National Museum of Beirut
About the place
- Country : Lebanon , Beirut
- Address : Museum Street, Beirut, Lebanon
- Category : Museums
- Establishing Date : 1943 AD
National Museum of Beirut
Overview:
The National Museum of Beirut is the principal museum of archaeology in Lebanon. The collection begun after World War I, and the museum was officially opened in 1942.
The museum has collections totalling about 100,000 objects, most of which are antiquities and medieval finds from excavations undertaken by the Directorate General of Antiquities.
About 1300 artifacts are exhibited, ranging in date from prehistoric times to Bronze Age, Iron Age, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Arab and Mamluk period.
Today, after a major renovation, the National Museum of Beirut has regained its former position.
Historic overview:
The establishment of the "National Museum" dates back to the twenties of the last century, when the need for a central headquarters to comprise archaeological finds, and after determining the site on the Damascus Road, construction work began in 1930 AD with updated Pharaonic architecture and ended in 1937 AD.
When it was opened in May 1943 AD, its exhibits included antiquities discovered in excavations in Beirut, Sidon, Tyre and other regions of Lebanon, and year after year its contents increased from all Lebanese regions, until it became in the following three decades the most prominent cultural institution in Lebanon.
Architectural Description:
The first floor: The ground floor is dedicated to mosaics and rock pieces, some of them large in size. In the middle wing and the right wing, contents from the Roman-Byzantine phase (636 AD), topped by the entrance, intact with all its details, the famous “Seven Wise Men” mosaic (Calliope, the inspirer of philosophy, surrounded by Socrates and the Seven Men of Wisdom). It used to decorate the dining room of a grandiose Roman edifice in Baalbek, near this mosaic of the same historical stage, a decapitated statue of "Emperor Hadrian" from the finds of Tyre.
The second floor: In the second floor, there are artistic objects of miniature size, as if the history here slows down at the pottery, glassware and rare ornaments, to be read on it with all deliberation, the product of human fingers through the ages.
There are other pieces that are being restored to be displayed at a later stage, when the basement of the museum opens to display the twenty-six rare sarcophagi.
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